We have been reading about the sexualisation of girls for some time now, however this worrying trend is now also affecting young boys. The market is being flooded with products loaded with attitude aimed at toddler aged boys and upwards. 

A recent Huggies ad featured a toddler in a denim-print nappy and button-down oxford shirt strutting down the street, women nearby swooned as he stepped into a limousine.

Clothes range from adult designer collections to T Shirts brandishing slogans like “I’m a tits man”. The latest Witchery Kids range shows pouting boys belligerently ignoring the girls they are standing with. Even celebrities are cashing in with Jennifer Lopez including her twin toddler boys in the latest Gucci campaign.

“People think, ‘Oh, it’s kinda cute’, it’s about breastfeeding,” says Julie Gale, founder of the non-profit lobby group KidsFree2BKids, of the “Tits man” T-shirts, sold last year at Cotton On Kids. “And that’s how [the brand] justifies it. But, really. I mean, really.”

Actress Noni Hazlehurst spoke out against the Witchery Kids campaign, telling the Herald Sun: “It’s really sad that people are trying to redefine what early childhood means”.

This seems to be part of a broader cultural landscape where at an early age it is implied that boys should be macho, dominating and view girls as objects. 

Author of What’s Happening to our Boys? and Generation Next speaker, Maggie Hamilton said “As a society, we get the vulnerability of girls far quicker than [that of] boys. Years before we thought little boys were vulnerable to sexual abuse, we started to protect girls. And now we’re seeing the fallout from men who were abused horribly.”

“So this is absolutely what we have to come to terms with: our boys in this unbelievably sexualised environment.”

Child development experts all agree that this kind of exposure at a young age can cause developmental issues later on.

Ms Jennifer Walsh, Education Officer, Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society (ARCSHS), said many professionals are now dealing with primary school children who feel the “pressure to present themselves in a sexual way without the mature understanding that goes with that…  and failing to develop those other aspects of themselves that childhood should allow them to develop normally.”

Ms Hamilton said during her research, she encountered preschool teachers who told her about their boy toddlers’ ”increasing anxieties” about wearing the ”right” clothing.

She said ”When you see a little boy dressed like a kid of eight or nine, we see them as more mature than they are, and [parents sometimes] allow them to make choices they’re perhaps not ready to make, like [going] to see an action film that’s actually quite violent, or allowing them unfettered access to computer time without any supervision.”

Parents are also concerned about the sexualisation of children as seen by their submissions in the 2008 Senate inquiry into the sexualisation of children in the Media.

They stated that young people “have the right of innocence and should be allowed to mature at their own rate and not forced upon [sic] by media outlets, advertisers or designers”.

The inquiry acknowledged that “This is a community responsibility which demands action by society. In particular, the onus is on broadcasters, publishers, advertisers, retailers and manufacturers to take account of these community concerns.” However little or no action seems to have resulted from their recommendations.

After agreeing to explore possibilities for a “major longitudinal study into the effects of premature and inappropriate sexualisation of children”, it concluded that such a study “fell outside the scope of existing research bodies”.

According the the Sydney Morning Herald, a recommended review of the Australian Association of National Advertisers’ Code for Advertising and Marketing Communications to Children never happened.

Maggie Hamilton concluded that “A healthy society protects its young, empowers them, makes them excited about their role, prepares them for it … They don’t make money out of them. And that’s something we don’t like to talk about.”

Writer Helen Splarn. Editor Dr Ramesh Manocha
Source: Sydney Morning Herald. 2008 Senate inquiry into the Sexualisation of Children